the sea, she takes no lover
by inversereality
Summary: in which...selkie cats exist?
She was gone before she was ever really there, and he was dead before he was ever really alive.

The place where she slept was cold when he touched it, but as he placed his paw on the soft moss, he realized he couldn't really remember a time when it had ever been warm. An elusive creature, she had been, sometimes only half there and sometimes not there at all. Hard to find and hard to keep and even harder to understand.

But he thought that she had loved him. All those moons she stayed, or he had thought she did, and he thought it had been because she loved him. But now the understanding that those moons had been few, and that her love had been an illusion, was unfurling inside his head. Slowly at first, and then rapidly, a dozen memories—memories of nights when she did not sleep in this den—spilled from behind his eyes into his throat as a wail. He put up no defense against it, and so his song of mourning split the thick morning air into two halves: the half behind him, where he had awoken in love and comforted, and the half in front of him, where he would have to walk forward through time without her.

A cold wind blew against him, but his fur did not move, because the breeze was internal. He could feel the ice replace his blood, and he was so cold. So cold.

She had brought him so much warmth, and it was leaving him now.

He stood there until the sun left the horizon and rose behind the cave entrance, but to him it seemed only a few minutes. He stood there because he knew that if he moved it would all become real—if he stepped forward, the space in air and time behind him would be pain instead of love. If he stayed where he was, behind him would be love, and ahead of him would be pain, and at least that way he'd still be able to feel it.

But the shadows grew long in front of his den, stretching out across the forest floor, and suddenly he stumbled.

He hadn't really noticed the pain, or that the sun had moved, or that it had been hours since he had awoken, but his legs gave out and he went down, and then he could feel the aching in his paws, and the bruising forming along his cheekbone where he had hit the ground, and the hunger in his belly. And now the sun was on its way down and the forest would be dark soon, and he would have to sleep knowing she was gone.

And then, on the breeze—a real breeze this time, flitting lightly into the den—he caught the slightest hint of salt.

He did not love the sea. The salt in the air settled in his fur as the day wore on, and the sand clumped uncomfortably in the place between the pads of his paws and his skin, grating against it with every step. At the end of the day he was sticky and a victim of multiple rashes, plagued by the heavy scent and weighed down by the humidity. There were no soft moss nests to rest in. The water tore at his fur when he dared to come near, threatening to cast him beneath its surface, and it was so cold, so cold.

Ah, but it was a beautiful thing.

Monstrous grace, it had. It crashed violently against the shore, yes, but it did so with rhythm, with a constant release of power. The sun broke in golden shards across its surface, glittering with the ripples and rolling with the waves.

He did not love the sea, but he loved its beauty.

And the wind, swirling into his cave, brought this vivid image in through his nose, and he turned his head because the sea was where he had found her.

He had heard the legends, of course, before he found the sea, and her—those legends which spoke of creatures of the sea, who shed their skins to reveal felines beneath them. He hadn't been entirely sure of whether or not he believed them, when he went looking. Part of him wanted to believe, and part of him did not, and so he sought the sea in a strange balance of curiosity and practicality. He would not be surprised if he found those creatures, but he would not be disappointed if he found nothing.

The sea had been easier to find than the creatures. Or _creature_ , rather, because _she_ was the only one she had found. He almost left, before she had appeared—almost left because he wasn't disappointed, as he'd vowed to himself, and the sea had no need for him.

But something stopped him, something told him to trust the legends, and so he stayed, two days and two nights, and as the moon reached the center of the sky on the second night, he saw eyes.

They were dark, and he only noticed them because the moon reflected off their surfaces. He watched, in awe and a little afraid, as a form rose from the water. And there, beneath the moonlight, the form let its skin fall away, he found himself meeting the eyes of the most beautiful she-cat he had ever seen.

She had been lonely, he found. She was lost, and had been for a long time, and there were none of her kind in this place where she had found herself.

She did not know how to find her way home, and she wanted his help in finding them, because they lived along another shore and he was a land creature.

They spent many days there, where he had found her, and he fell in love with her and he thought she had fallen in love with him, and his promises to help her gave way to a plead for her to be his own.

He paid little attention to her reluctance. There _was_ something there, love or not, and he could see she was torn, but he begged anyway, and one day, at last, she conceded. And so she was his and he was hers and he felt more alive than he had ever felt before, and he brought her to the forest because he loved the forest and thought she would as well.

He did not hide her skin from her, because he thought she loved him and would stay.

Some nights she did not sleep in his den. Some nights he would awaken and her nest would be cold, but she returned before the sunrise. He assumed she missed the water and thought little of it, because she always came back.

But the sun had risen on this day and she had not returned, and it had fallen and she was still gone.

He rose to his paws, at last, the sea-scent overwhelming him, memories flashing violently through his mind, and left his den. Around the outside of the stone there was a dip in the ground that dug back a whisker-length beneath the wall, and it was here that they had kept the skin.

It was gone, just as he had known it would be.

He turned then, and he let the wind guide him. The salt scent set a trail through the forest, and he followed it, walking and walking and walking and ignoring his hunger and the weariness in his paws. The last of the day's light faded away as he walked, and he became his own shadow, passing through the trees more as a ghost than as a cat.

Then there was the sea, and the sand was whiter than the moon, and the water was glass, made up of pieced-together black and white shards. And there were those eyes, the eyes he had seen so long ago and claimed as his own for the taking.

She stayed beneath the water as he padded down the beach. She watched him in silence, a look on her face he'd never seen, and did no more than lift her chin as he approached.

"I knew you'd come," she said at last, once his paws touched the damp sand on the edge of the water. "Come back to reclaim your prize, yes?"

He did not answer. Those eyes were unmistakable, but this was not the one he had know. She had never spoken to him like this.

"You do not love me," she hissed, leaning back to float on her shoulder blades. "You love my face, and my fur, and my eyes, but you do not love _me_."

He opened his mouth to protest, to tell her he did love her—he _did_ , didn't he?—but nothing came out.

"You do not love me, but you love my beauty."

Finally the words spilled forth, and he shouted "I do!" before he knew he was going to. "I do love you! I always have!"

She only shook her head. "You do not. And this—" She paused, sweeping her eyes across the water. "You took me from this. This is my home: the water, the sea. I _am_ the sea."

"No…" He shook his head, trying to bring his thoughts to his tongue. "No…I thought you loved the forest. I brought you there because I thought you loved it. I didn't—"

"You promised me," she interrupted, "that we would find my family. Do you remember? You promised. Yet we never did."

He had no words. He had no thoughts. A world was crashing down around him, and he was dying inside, and yet he could say nothing.

There was something else in her eyes now. He had never seen this look either. "Do you love me?" she whispered.

"I do," he told her. "I do."

"Then come to me. Come to me, darling."

Her voice was so smooth, so lyrical. So beautiful.

"Come to me."

That look in her eyes…

"Come be with me."

He couldn't breathe underwater. He knew that. She knew that. But that voice…her voice.

"Do you love me?"

"I do."

He needed to…to look away…and—

"Come."

He stepped into the sea, and he did not come back out.


End file.
